Of Wandering
To be lost and alone, wandering aimlessly through a foreign city, is a wonderfully frightening experience, made all the better if you have no phone nor knowledge of the cities language or of the location of your hotel. The wonder, however, you do not know until the final stages of the ordeal. At first, and for a long while after, you know only the fright, because although you can hear everything, you can understand nothing; although you know you are in a city, you can see only a maze; and although you are surrounded by people, you feel only alone.
The moment that you become aware that you are lost, your senses become extraordinarily heightened. Your pulse jumps as it does in the moment before a race, or after you’ve avoided a deer in the road, or when you catch yourself falling out of a chair. The people who were with you are no longer where they were and you begin to look wildly around, though in the back of your mind you know the attempt is in vain. You are lost amidst a sea of people.
For a moment you are like the child who has been separated from his parents at the fair or at the mall. And like the child who is swept away from his parents by a tide of people, you feel helpless. People take no notice of you or of the anxiety and fright that you endure. Business must be taken care of, meetings must be attended, and plans must be fulfilled. Life goes on.
You decide to trace your steps as far back as you can remember in the hopes that you will come across one of those who you have lost, or perhaps chance to pass by your hotel or a familiar street. You walk quickly and with a nervous gait, breathing heavily and swinging your arms faster than you should. Your mind fills with worry and your eyes scan every passing face and street sign in desperation. Before long, you realize that you do not know where you are now any more than you did before.
Now, depending on the type of person that you are, you will react to this unfortunate circumstance in one of three ways. The first is that you will begin asking each passerby whether they speak English or whether they have a phone or whether they know where your hotel is. But, unless you have committed your companion’s phone numbers to memory, which is not a common thing anymore (especially among those of my age), or unless you happen to remember the name of your hotel or some aspect of its location, as it is likely to be a chain hotel, then this is a useless reaction. The second is that you will make your panic and fright visible to the world, either through tears or through heavy breathing or through a variety of other nervous ticks. A kind passerby or two may stop to make sure that you are okay, but again, unless you have phone numbers or your hotels location committed to memory, this is not particularly useful. The third is that you will simply accept your fate and float through the foreign streets, hoping that you might chance upon a map or your companions or a store where you can purchase a charger for your phone.
It is only in the wandering that you will find the wonder. When you begin to stroll through a beautiful city, when you realize that no one knows you nor cares who you are, when you happen to chance upon some park or landmark that you had not intended to visit, you begin to feel wonderfully liberated. The feeling of panic and anxiety gradually begins to fade, and in its place grows a feeling of freedom and content. So, if ever you find yourself in a situation such as this, I recommend that you simply purchase a bottle of wine and wander the streets of whatever city you have let yourself get lost in.
II
I myself have experienced this twice. The first time was in Arles but I was not lost for long and it was not particularly frightening, as it is a relatively small city and I was confident that I knew the way back to my hotel. The second, and the better remembered time, was in Rome. I was taking a trip from Barcelona to Rome with a group of people during the summer of 2012. We arrived in Rome around 4:00pm in the afternoon and had a dinner scheduled for 6:30pm that night. After checking into our hotel we set off for the restaurant. It was a nice little place in the center of the city with an underwater theme and a cozy atmosphere. We sat down to a six course meal and more than a few glasses of wine.
When dinner was over we were set to return to the hotel for some rest, as we were to get up early the next morning and take a tour of some of the many attractions that Rome has to offer. We had been on the bus from the restaurant for two stops before we realized that four people in our group were missing. Nobody remembered seeing them at the bus stop, so we weren’t sure if they knew which bus they were supposed to take back to the hotel. Being that I had become close friends with three of the people who had been left behind, I volunteered to go back, find them, and take the next bus.
Naturally, things didn’t work out as I had intended. I found my way back to the bus stop, but there was no sign of the group. I checked back in the restaurant, which was only across the street from the bus stop, but they were not there either. I decided to walk around the area and see if they had decided to wander off together. I couldn’t find them and so I resolved to take the next bus back to the hotel and hope that they had already caught a bus.
But I had wandered too far. I couldn’t remember how to get back to the bus stop. The streets of Rome, like the streets of many old European cities, are not laid out in a particularly sensible fashion. After going through much the same process as I described above and proceeding to sink ever deeper into the heart of Rome, I simply gave in and purchased a bottle of wine. I wandered the streets of Rome for a long time. I didn’t have a watch or a phone, so I’m not quite sure how long, but it was certainly more than an hour.
Eventually I stumbled upon the Trevi Fountain. The fountain was surrounded by tourists and lovers come to marvel at its beauty under the midnight lights of Rome. I too found myself enamored by the fountain. I walked down the steps, closer to the fountain, and found an empty seat next to a middle-aged Italian woman who spoke no English. I sat there for a long while and finished my bottle of wine. I don’t know whether to attribute it to the wine or the liberating feeling of having wandered through such a city and stumbled upon such a monument, but I remember feeling quite happy in that moment. I don’t know how long I sat on that bench by the Trevi Fountain, but when I finally decided to get up I found that the woman who I had been sitting next to had been replaced by a young Asian couple.
I took a final look at the fountain and climbed the back up the steps, still unsure of where I was to go. But, as my luck would have it, the four missing members of our group were standing at the top of the steps, drinking and watching the fountain. After they left the restaurant and could find nobody, they decided they would wander off and explore the city. They too had simply happened to stumble upon the Trevi Fountain. We stood around the fountain, talking and drinking more wine, and having what was one of the best moments of our trip. The sightseeing was enjoyable and visiting the various cities was wonderful, but the best moments of the trip were the simple ones. Those moments when we simply talked and drank and enjoyed being lost in whatever city we were in.
